


Exceptional Training

by moonblooch



Series: Critical Class-Swap [2]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Jester is a ranger, Mentions of the rest of the Nein, also to be clear said familiar is a seagull, class swap with vox machina, mentions of a familiar, vague illusions to fjorjester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-08-17 07:59:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16512380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonblooch/pseuds/moonblooch
Summary: In which Jester grows up with her eyes on the sky.





	Exceptional Training

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry to anyone who read Superior Inspiration if the name change is confusing.

Jester spends her life at the window, watching the life of the city. Not the people, she has grown to find them dull with time, but the other life. The plants that force their way through the cobbles, the rats that skirt the gutters, and the thousands upon thousands of birds that weave through the sky.

She likes to scatter scraps on her windowsill and watch them descend in a flurry of white feathers, then try to identify them from one of the few non-fiction books on her shelf. They’re mostly little kittiwakes and mews, the bigger birds faring better further north, so they scare easily but a few stay long enough for her to talk to them.

The thing is, Jester talks with her hands. She’s often felt that her thoughts are too big for just words, but her gestures can grow to defy reason when she’s excited. And on that day, a day she will later remember as the most important of her life, there is plenty of reason to be excited. There is a great black-backed gull perched on her windowsill. It seems to have scared off the others, and that isn’t surprising because it is just so much bigger than them. More importantly though, it is squawking back at Jester as she speaks, almost as if answering her.

So Jester gives it scraps, and day after day it comes back and talks to her. And she talks to it, with her gestures and expressive noises and attempts at gull cries. And it starts talking back.

Properly talking back.

With words.

Jester nearly falls off her desk when it first happens.

“You can talk?!”

The seagull fixes her with a tired look.

“Darlin’ I’ve been talkin’ the whole time, ain’t you been listenin’?”

The gull stays until Jester can figure out how she made her talk, which turns out to be a strange combination of vowels and hand movements. She’s done magic before; what with her infernal heritage a certain number of accidents were inevitable. Mostly a whole lot of door slamming when she was supposed to be quiet.

Jester pesters her mother for magic books, and introduces her to the seagull (who doesn’t have a name as such but will answer to a number of nicknames if they make her laugh).  She reads, and though most of the spells don’t speak to her, she can cast a few very well.

A little too well, as in this world it is not Disguise Self that sees her banished, but a Hail of Thorns towards a client who was being too rough.

But that is not yet. That is later.

For now the seagull talks her through her new abilities. She takes off for a few days at a time, then comes back with stories. Some are first hand, some are not, but all are mesmerising and Jester soon finds herself pining for the wilds. Despite the potted plants that inhabit her desk she’s never actually seen a tree up close. Her feathered friend describes them well enough. She will have to remain content with that for now.

Until one day the gull is no longer there.

In her place is a single egg, still warm as Jester cradles it in her hands. Despite the sun outside, she rushes to her fireplace and pokes at last night’s embers in an attempt to get them to spark again. She sets the egg down, as close as she dares, to the flame and perches before it waiting. It could be dead, she knows, but she focuses as much magic as she can muster into the thing, for long enough that she can no longer feel the draft from the open window.

Then a beak breaks through the shell, fragments falling away and she almost reaches out to touch it but she knows this is a journey that the chick has to make alone. She finds tears in her eyes as the featherless thing makes its first movements, awkwardly flapping its stubby wings.

‘Stubby’ is what he comes to be called, once she’s had him with her for a week. Her mother had warned her not to name him too soon, not to get attached until she was certain he was going to make it. But she scratches insects from the floorboard, tears tiny shreds from the meals on her plate until eventually he opens his eyes.

“Hey little guy.” Jester does her best to keep her voice gentle, though her excitement makes her squeaky. He cheeps back to her, even though she’s certain she cast Speak With Animals he isn’t yet old enough for words.

He can only just talk when they have to leave, still a bundle of wrinkled skin and feathers who had to be stuffed into a pocket as they snuck away from the city they had both called home for their entire lives. She’s clutching an axe which was kept for cutting wood in the rare winters that required full fires. It’s grown dull and she is terrified, but there’s an excitement running through her veins as she walks up the road to the border of the Empire. She’s going north to the forests her friend had spoken of, to adventure.

Adventure doesn’t find her as soon as a travelling companion, who introduces himself as Fjord, does, but she isn’t inclined to complain. He’s interesting. He murmurs names in his sleep, brows creased in something that might be anger. He’s hard to read, but he’s safe, he _feels_ safe and Stubby had assured her of as much from spying on him when it’s his turn to take watch.

Jester’s read too many books about tall, handsome strangers with mysterious pasts, and heard too many cautionary tales from her mother, to invest herself yet. She knows herself well enough to know it’s going to happen; Fjord’s technically her first real friend. Of course there had been friendly people back in Nicodranas, but no one she was friends with. She tells him as much, a little while after they’ve acquired Beau, and manages to get a blush in return.

Beau, who Jester counts as her second real friend, is a matter unto herself. She had arrived when Jester and Fjord were travelling through a forest, collapsing into their camp, and kind of hung around like a stray cat afterwards. Much like a cat she is somewhat standoffish to begin with, but Jester notices her looking at Stubby and that soon changes.

“Do you want to pet him?” she asks.

“Huh?”

“Stubby, do you want to pet him? I’ve asked and he won’t mind.”

Beau gives her a strange look.

“Sure.”

She reaches out to Stubby, currently perched on Jester’s shoulder, and runs tentative fingers along his head.

“He’s softer than he looks.” For the first time since they met, Jester sees something that looks like a smile creep onto Beau’s face as she digs her fingers deeper into the feathers and ruffles them.

“Tell her more.” Stubby says, arching his head back and closing his eyes. Jester passes the message on.

“Animals don’t usually let me pet them like this.” Beau admits. “They like me okay, but I get on better with plants.”

“Maybe you just haven’t met the right one yet.” Jester suggests.

From there their journey is easier. Until Trostenwald and the snake, which she feels bad about killing, but she had tried reasoning with it and it had tried to eat Stubby in return. It’s good to be paid too, until yet another creature tries to eat Stubby. He stands a much better chance against a cat (would probably stand a decent chance against the cat’s owner too if looks are anything to go by), and this particular encounter gives her two more friends.

Technically four, if Molly and Yasha are counted, but few things can bind people to each other like being thrown out of a tavern for a fight that was only technically their fault.

**Author's Note:**

> So I might add to this? I'm bad at ending things but this kind of feels like a cut off point so it's staying for now because I'd rather get this up and out there. I've written a decent chunk of the class swap for Caleb, as well as the beginnings of Fjord's and Molly's (plus at least a sentence or three for Beau, Yasha and Caduceus).
> 
> Stubby is kind of a reference to campaign one, but also because 'Stubby the Seagull' is fun.


End file.
